Spire, vaults, the shrine, the spoil, the slain,
The turban'd victors, the Christian band,
All that of living or dead remain,
Hurl'd on high with the shiver'd fane,

In one wild roar expiréd!

The shatter'd town--the walls thrown down-
The waves a moment backwards bent-

· The hills that shake, although unrent,
As if an earthquake pass'd-
The thousand shapeless things all driven
In cloud and flame athwart the heaven,
By that tremendous blast-
Proclaim'd the desperate conflict o'er
On that too long afflicted shore:
Up to the sky like rockets go
All that mingled there below:
Many a tall and goodly man,
Scorch'd and shrivell'd to a span,
When he fell to earth again,
Like a cinder strew'd the plain

Down the ashes shower like rain:

Some fell in the gulf, which received the sprinkles

With a thousand circling wrinkles;

away,

Some fell on the shore, but, far
Scatter'd o'er the isthmus lay;
Christian or Moslem, which be they?
Let their mothers see and say!
When in cradled rest they lay,
And each nursing mother smiled
On the sweet sleep of her child,
Little deem'd she such a day
Would rend those tender limbs away.
Not the matrons that them bore
Could discern their offspring more;
That one moment left no trace

More of human form or face,
Save a scatter'd scalp or bone :
And down came blazing rafters, strown
Around, and many a falling stone,

293

Deeply dinted in the clay,

All blacken'd there and reeking lay.
All the living things that heard
That deadly earth-shock disappear'd:
The wild birds flew, the wild dogs fled,
And howling left the unburied dead;
The camels from their keepers broke;
The distant steer forsook the yoke-
The nearer steed plunged o'er the plain,
And burst his girth, and tore his rein;
The bull-frog's note, from out the marsh,
Deep-mouth'd arose, and doubly harsh;
The wolves yell'd on the cavern'd hill,
Where echo roll'd in thunder still;
The jackals' troop, in gather'd cry,"
Bay'd from afar complainingly,
With a mix'd and mournful sound,
Like crying babe and beaten hound:
With sudden wing and ruffled breast,
The eagle left his rocky nest,

And mounted nearer to the sun,

The clouds beneath him seem'd so dun;

Their smoke assail'd his startled beak,

And made him higher soar and shriek--
Thus was Corinth lost and won!

000

NOTES.

Note 1. Page 271.

The following fragment had been intended by Byron as an opening to the "Siege of Corinth ;" but was suppressed on further consideration (MOORE's Life, v. 1, p. 455).

In the year since Jesus died for men,
Eighteen hundred years and ten,
We were a gallant company,

Riding o'er land, and sailing o'er sea.

Oh! but we went merrily!

We forded the river, and clomb the high hill;

Never our steeds for a day stood still;
Whether we lay in the cave or the shed,
Our sleep fell soft on the hardest bed;
Whether we couch'd in our rough capote,
On the rougher plank of our gliding boat,
Or stretch'd on the beach, or our saddles spread

As a pillow beneath the resting head,

Fresh we woke upon the morrow:

All our thoughts and words had scope,

We had health, and we had hope,

Toil and travel, but no sorrow.
We were of ali tongues and creeds;-

Some were those who counted beads,

Some of mosque, and some of church,
And some, or I mis-say, of neither;

Yet through the wide world might ye search,
Nor find a motlier crew nor blither.
But some are dead, and some are gone,
And some are scatter'd and alone,

And some are rebels on the hills

That look along Epirus' valleys,
Where freedom still at moments rallies,
And pays in blood oppression's ills;
And some are in a far countree,
And some all restlessly at home:
But never more, on: never, we
Shall meet to revel and to roam.

But those hardy days flew cheerily,
And when they now fall drearily,

My thoughts, like swallows, skim the main,

And bear my spirit back again

Over the earth, and through the air,

A wild bird and a wanderer.

'T is this that ever wakes my strain,

And oft, too oft, implores again

The few who may endure my lay,

To follow me so far away.

Stranger-wilt thou follow now,

And sit with me on Acro-Corinth's brow I-E.

Note 2. Page 271.

Since first Timoleon's brother bled.

Timoleon killed his brother for aiming at the supreme power in Corinth.-E.

Note 3. Page 272.

The Turcoman hath left his herd.

The life of the Turcomans is wandering and patriarchal : they dwell in tents.

Note 4. Page 273.

Coumourgi-he whose closing scene.

Ali Coumourgi, the favourite of three sultans and Grand Vizier to Achmet III.,

after recovering Peloponnesus from the Venetians, in one campaign, was mortally wounded in the next, against the Germans, at the battle of Peterwaradin (in the plain of Carlowitz), in Hungary, endeavouring to rally his guards. He died of his wounds next day. His last order was the decapitation of General Breuner, and some other German prisoners; and his last words, "Oh that I could thus serve all the Christian dogs!" a speech and act not unlike one of Caligula. He was a young man of great ambition and unbounded presumption : on being told that Prince I shall become a Eugene, then opposed to him, "was a great general," he said greater, and at his expense."

Note 5. Page 279.

There shrinks no ebb in that tideless sea.

The reader need hardly be reminded that there are no perceptible tides in the Mediterranean.

Note 6. Page 280.

And their white tusks crunch'd o'er the whiter skull.

This spectacle I have seen, such as described, beneath the wall of the Seraglio at Constantinople, in the little cavities worn by the Bosphorus in the rock, a narrow terrace of which projects between the wall and the water. I think the fact is also mentioned in Hobhouse's Travels. The bodies were probably those of some refractory Janizaries.

This tuft, or long lock, into paradise by it.

Note 7. Page 280.

And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair.

is left from a superstition that Mahomet will draw them

Note 8. Page 282.

I must here acknowledge a close, though unintentional, resemblance in these twelve lines to a passage in an unpublished poem of Mr. Coleridge, called "Christabel." It was not till after these lines were written that I heard that wild and singularly original and beautiful poem recited; and the MS. of that production I never saw till very recently, by the kindness of Mr. Coleridge himself, who, I hope, is convinced that I have not been a wilful plagiarist. The original idea undoubtedly pertains to Mr. Coleridge, whose poem has been composed above fourteen years. Let me conclude by a hope that he will no longer delay the publication of a production, of which I can only add my mite of approbation to the applause of far more competent judges.

Note 9. Page 284.

There is a light cloud by the moon.

I have been told that the idea expressed in this and the five following lines have been admired by those whose approbation is valuable. I am glad of it: but it is not original-at least not mine; it may be found much better expressed in pages 182-3-4 of the English version of " Vathek" (I forget the precise page of the French), a work to which I have before referred; and never recur to, or read, without a renewal of gratification.

Note 10. Page 285.

The horse-tails are pluck'd from the ground.

The horsetail, fixed upon a lance, a pacha's standard.

Note 11. Page 288.

And since the day, when in the strait.

In the naval battle at the mouth of the Dardanelles, between the Venetians and the Turks,

Note 12. Page 294.

The jackals' troop, in gather'd cry.

I believe I have taken a poetical license to transplant the jackal from Asia. In Greece I never saw nor heard these animals; but among the ruins of Ephesus I have heard them by hundreds. They haunt ruins, and follow armies.

PARISINA.

TO SCROPE BERDMORE DAVIES, ESQ.

THE FOLLOWING POEM IS INSCRIBED,

BY ONE WHO HAS LONG ADMIRED HIS TALENTS, AND VALUED HIS FRIENDS HIP.

January 23, 1816.